As if being the San Francisco Symphony's principal bassoonist, and composing and teaching at the S.F. Conservatory didn't keep him busy enough, Stephen Paulson is also leading Symphony Parnassus' final concert of the season on June 3 … and he will join SFS musicians for a Congregation Sherith Israel benefit concert for the S.F.-Marin Food Bank on June 8.
The Parnassus concert, at the S.F. Conservatory, will have an illustrious soloist, Stuart Canin, performing the rarely heard 1950 violin concerto by Frank Martin; Paulson's arrangement of Lully's "Marche pour la Ceremonie des Turcs," from his incidental music to Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and Stravinsky's 1919 Firebird Suite.
The Martin concerto is one of Canin's favorites. He has recorded it with Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony. Paulson says working with Canin has "special meaning for me because he was the SFS concertmaster during my first years with the orchestra."
The benefit concert will be performed without conductor and it includes the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, Mozart's Divertimento in D Major, K. 136, the Stravinsky Octet for Wind Instruments, and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1.